Sarah Palin Needs to Step Down and Stay Out of the Press

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it the republicans you complain about how welfare recipients ‘sponge’ off the government? Aren’t they the same people who think you should sink or swim without any assistance from Uncle Sam?

One of GOP’s shining stars has become so tarnished that she needs to be taken off display and retired, for good.

This country dodged a huge bullet when McCain/Palin lost last November. And I pray to God that we do not have to face the prospect of her running for national office again.

This woman takes ‘perks’ from her position as governor as if tax payers dollars belong to her. Can you imagine what she would do with the much larger federal ‘treasure chest’ she would have had access to as Vice President?

Every tax dollar she siphons off from her fellow Alaskans is less that goes to running Alaska. Sure, the amounts she has been using for her own pleasure is a drop in the bucket but the issue is the ethics of using tax payer money to fly family members to such non-state functions as the Iron Dog snowmachine race.

She even accepted per diem reimbursements while living in her own home. This is an obvious mis-appropriation of funds. And being committed by the governor should be grounds for impeachment.

Ethics is obviously a strange concept to Sarah Palin. Oh she can speak to how others should follow ethical behavior but to apply it to herself obviously requires a complaint and an investigation, which costs Alaskans even more money.

America was saved from Palin once, please, let’s not have to go through this again.

And to the main stream media, stop giving her press coverage. You are only encouraging her.

Food Safety Program Needs Restructuring, Not Another Agency

In the wake of the recent salmonella outbreak that killed 9 people and sickened over 600 others, food safety concerns have become a pressing issue.

The Food and Drug Administration takes the brunt of the responsibility and is the most pressured to find the cause and correct it.

However, at least 15 agencies are involved in making sure food is safe under at least 30 different laws, some of which date back to the early 1900s. it doesn’t matter how old a law is as long as it works. And if those 30 laws work then they should remain in place. However, it seems there needs to be some re-thinking as to how often food gets inspected and by whom.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have been proposing an overhaul of the nation's food safety structure for more than a decade. Food safety advocates agree.

I don’t believe we need another bureaucratic agency to add to the convoluted maze, just shore up practices already in place. The system will work if given enough inspectors with the proper guidelines and abilities.

The Department of Agriculture should inspect anything grown or raised on a farm, domestic and imported. The FDA should cover everything else that enters the human body (drugs, etc), domestic and imported. They need to agree on a schedule of inspections and they both need the ability to shutdown operations if a threat is discovered.

Obviously, an alert system needs to be in place to notify the general public of a possible contamination of food, possible source(s), and where the product was shipped. And this alert needs to take place within days of the discovery not months as is currently the case.

It seems reasonable that if any manufacturer has to face the possibility of a shutdown (cutting into their profits) then it would be in their best interest to ensure their product is safe.

Raw food inspections covered by USDA, this covers growers. Processed foods covered by FDA, this covers processors.

An additional safety net would be provided by the health department to inspect facilities and ensure workers are following safe food-handling procedures.

This means that some foods will be inspected more than once. The bottom line is that all possible sources of contamination needs to be inspected, as the source of all tainted food has come from mis-handling of food and/or contamination of facilities.

Smart Grid: Big Brothers Eyes and Ears

Smart Grid is part of a global initiative to manage information, all information. This is not some dire fictional prediction; it exists right now, right here in the United States, and thanks to President Obama, the Secretary of the Treasury can lend the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), a division of the Department of Energy, $3.25 billion to implement Smart Grid.

Ostensibly, Smart Grid is about energy efficiency and climate change. This intelligent power grid gathers information about individual energy use via sensors embedded in the transmission lines and in homes and businesses. The government, via WAPA, will know what temperature at which you keep your home or business. If you keep your domicile warmer or cooler than the temperature approved by the federal government, you pay more. To some, this is an acceptable arrangement, until they discover what else Smart Grid can do.

This is another means by which the federal government can keep tabs on what you do and where you go. Think keeping track of thermostat settings is harmless? Think using your credit/debit card to make all of your purchases (travel destinations, pharmaceuticals, books, etc) is harmless? What about drivers licenses that now have electro-magnetic strips on them? How about OnStar, the emergency help system that will eventually be used to stop your vehicle on police command, or cellphone GPS so authorities can track where you are?. All of these seemingly harmless systems taken by themselves are just that, harmless. But, given this latest push to implement this Smart Grid plan within 60 days, a larger more sinister picture is developing.

IBM and GE will receive billions of dollars under the federal governments implementation of Smart Grid. Appliances, cars, home furnishings, even clothing are all becoming more intelligent and the devices that allow this intelligence will be able to be accessed by anyone with the proper equipment. In the wrong (or right) hands data collected from these many devices can tell the government everything about you and anyone who is in your house or place of business, at any time.

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interactions between all of these various systems will grow exponentially. A Smart Grid set up to capture and catalog all of those seemingly innocuous transactions can paint a very clear picture of you and your lifestyle. The dire vision as laid out in George Orwell’s book 1984 about our future is coming true, today.

Our political leaders are not the only ones who have been handed a mandate for change. Leaders of businesses and institutions everywhere have a unique opportunity to transform the way the world works.

Global integration is upon us. It is becoming an acceptable and necessary part of our everyday lives and is gently lulling us into a false sense of security. As the world becomes smarter through the integration of systems monitoring such diverse concerns as climate change, global supply chains, money transactions, and security, we are falling under the spell cast by a government that covets as much information as it can get on its citizens.

Homeland Security and the FBI have been obsessing over plans to document palm prints, eye scans and tattoo mapping of every U.S. citizen and anyone who crosses our borders. Will this information assist them in fulfilling their mandate to protect Americans? The vast majority of Americans will never consider committing a terrorist act against their neighbors, family or anyone else. How is collecting information on these people going to better serve the FBI and Homeland Security or us?

The final legal threshold preventing the FBI from monitoring Americans without probable cause was crossed when a special appeals court ruled that criminal prosecutors should be able to request the bugging of suspected terrorists. And the court system consistently sides with law enforcement, in all matters.

A computer system, developed under the Total Information Awareness System by the Bush Administration, was set up to monitor every American’s credit card transactions, phone calls and even borrowed library books in an anti-terrorist measure under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency is also funding the development of technologies to allow the Government to track e-mail, internet use, travel, and bank records, medical files and every type of accessible private and public data into what the Pentagon described as “one centralized grand database”.

This “grand database” was authorized under the scare of terrorism. But, who is terrorizing whom?

The Patriot Act increased powers for intelligence agents to monitor citizens.

Bureau of Prisons ordered by US Justice Department to alter its rules to allow the monitoring of lawyer-client conversations without court order or supervision.

A presidential executive order allowed military tribunals for anyone deemed by the Justice Department to be an “enemy combatant”, for which there is no legal definition.

We have already seen laws changed or flat out broken in order to spy on American citizens. We have learned of bills passed allowing data collection of American citizens. We have witnessed the growth of one the largest bureaucracies ever developed (Homeland Security) under the guise of preventing terrorism to reach America’s shores.

And now, the Smart Grid, set up to collect all information possible, is becoming a reality. Do you still need convincing that all of these ‘harmless’ single events does not mean that our government is bent on monitoring every aspect of our daily lives? Does there have to be nefarious reasons for someone to want to implement such an intrusive and all-inclusive system? Once this system is in place evil will find it easier to do as it wishes.

Clinton discusses global warming in China, but stays away from human rights

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set a new tone Saturday for U.S. relations with China, saying the two nations would join a common battle against global warming even as they look for ways to pull the world out of economic turmoil and recession.

Clinton cited the "tremendous opportunity" before Washington and Beijing as they unite on "one of the most important issues that has ever, ever faced humanity."

She side stepped the "tremendous opportunity" before Washington and Beijing to unite on an even more important issue that has ever, ever faced humanity.

What can you expect from a politician. Money and economics always wins out over human rights. There just isn’t enough money to be made in human rights.

To the apparent relief of China, Clinton downplayed issues of human rights and religious freedom, saying they were raised in her meetings but that the administration of President Barack Obama saw advantage to working with Beijing on areas of greater agreement.

Several human rights groups decried Clinton's suggestion that human rights would not be a priority in U.S. engagement with China. Amnesty International said it was "shocked and extremely disappointed."

Another advocacy group, China Human Rights Defenders, said police confined some dissidents to their homes during Clinton's weekend visit to Beijing.

Among those under lockdown was constitutional scholar Zhang Zuhua, one of hundreds of dissidents who late last year signed Charter 08, which calls for greater civil rights and political reforms.

Thankfully, human rights groups will not allow China’s continued human rights violations to go unnoticed, even when ‘our leaders’ will.

Toothless FDA is at the Root of Our Food Safety Problems

An Op-Ed in the Washington Post calls for more regulation to protect our food system. More regulation will not help.

The root of the problem, exemplified in the Peanut Corporation of America case, compares with the revolving-door-justice given to drunken drivers as they go through the legal system. They are continually allowed back on our roads until someone finally is killed due to their reckless irresponsibility.

In my opinion the last judge who set them free should be held responsible just as the bar tender who gave them the last drink is.

The FDA discovered that PCA shipped salmonella-tainted product 12 times in 2007 and 2008. PCA is the drunk driver in this case.

PCA was not required to report their positive findings to the FDA. Responsibility for this ‘oversight’ falls to the FDA. It is incumbent upon the FDA to ensure that no tainted food is released to the public. A few simple words on the part of FDA regulation would have prevented situation to escalate.

The FDA is supposed to be made up of a body of experts, hired to foresee any potential problem and regulate it out of existence. What we need to do is give the FDA some teeth and allow them to bring charges against any corporate or business entity that knowingly jeopardizes the public health or safety.

Why do we drag our feet on these blatant violations and then call for more of the same type of legislation that won’t get enforced. We do not need more regulation what we need is someone with the intestinal fortitude to punish these immoral characters for cocking a loading gun and aiming it at the general public.

Benefits Claims Are Being Increasingly Challenged

It's hard enough to lose a job. But for a growing proportion of U.S. workers, the troubles really set in when they apply for unemployment benefits.

More than a quarter of people applying for such claims have their rights to the benefit challenged as employers increasingly act to block payouts to former workers.

The proportion of claims disputed by former employers and state agencies has reached record levels in recent years, according to the Labor Department numbers tallied by the Urban Institute.

Under state and federal laws, employees who are fired for misbehavior or quit voluntarily are ineligible for unemployment compensation. When jobless claims are blocked, employers save money because their unemployment insurance rates are based on the amount of the benefits their workers collect.

As unemployment rolls swell in the recession, many workers seem surprised to find their benefits challenged, their former bosses providing testimony against them. On one recent morning in what amounts to one of Maryland's unemployment courts, employees and employers squared off at conference tables to rehash reports of bad customer service, anger management and absenteeism.

Unemployment compensation programs are administered by the states and funded by payroll taxes that employers pay. In 2007, employers put up about $31.5 billion in such taxes, and those taxes typically rise during and after recessions, as states seek to replenish the funds.

When these current economic times get rough, laws forcing employers to do the right thing are increasingly being challenged. In a recent Washington Post article, the case of an electrician who was collecting unemployment benefits after losing his job at a Maryland hotel was being challenged by his ex-employer, the owners of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. A Washington Post reporter showed up in the courtroom resulting in the ex-employer withdrawing their appeal to challenge the unemployment benefits.

Why is it that someone who is fired for a reason out of their control has to hold the threat of public attention to force a company to uphold their end of the legal bargain?

This illustrates yet another of America’s problems, people trying to bypass laws to keep money for themselves without regard to how it affects an innocent victim.

We are all in this together, none of us turned this economy sour and treating people like tools to be thrown away instead of keeping in mind they are trying to survive too is only going to prolong the recovery.

Another result of this behavior is trust and faith in your fellow man is being further eroded away. This life does not have to be dog eat dog.

Several things an employee needs to do is keep your nose clean, do what is asked of you as long as it falls within the purview of your job description and keep a record of requests by your employer that fall outside of those guidelines. This record can become invaluable if you are ever fired and your claim to unemployment benefits is subsequently challenged. Trust me, employers will keep a written record of your work history and will not hesitate to use it against you in an attempt to save them from having to pay out legal benefits.

Court rulings have slowly enlarged the definition of employee misconduct, making it easier for employers to say they rightfully fired a worker which equates to a higher standard of behavior for employees. This of course automatically puts the employee at a distinct disadvantage, so just don’t give the employer reasons to fire you.

U.S. citizenship in Return for Military Duty. Is it worth it?

The U.S. military machine is facing a shortage of killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. also has a problem with illegal aliens constantly clawing their way into the U.S.

The Pentagon came up with a solution to both of these problems by offering citizenship to those illegals who have managed to live in this country for two years and have obtained work visas.

Is this a brilliant plan or another temporary band-aid for both the INS and the Pentagon? Will this move finally open up some jobs for those millions of Americans who have recently lost theirs? Keeping in mind that the jobs these visa’ed aliens are doing are jobs Americans did not want in the first place. So that means even more illegals will be entering the U.S. to fill these low-paying jobs. Of course they say they are looking to fill medical and interpreter positions but the only thing the Army truly cares about is getting warm bodies with weapons onto the battlefield.

If we had a higher volunteer rate for the U.S. military then this ‘solution’ to the shortage would not be on the table.

The military experts are already putting their spin on the plan by saying the temporary immigrants will have more education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than many Americans who enlist. They are leaving out the fact that the military will train these temporary immigrants (thereby giving them ‘more education’) in foreign language skills and professional expertise just as they would any American if those Americans would only enlist.

They claim to prefer green card holders over ‘illegal’ aliens due to the security screening that comes with temporary visas. But just how stringent are the guidelines for what passes as a security check?

The army has already provided waivers to new recruits allowing them to enlist despite medical conditions or criminal records. This shows that their standards are not as high as they let on.

And for the ‘reward’ of citizenship these ‘temporary immigrants’ will face, if they return physically unharmed, psychological scarring and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the rest of their lives.

If they are physically wounded they face rundown over-crowded military hospitals to provide for their care and the possibility of PTSD.

If they die they don’t have to worry about any of these problems.

All this for the privilege of competing with millions of other unemployed people vying for minimum wage jobs at or below poverty level that most likely will not offer any healthcare or job security.

They are better off being illegal aliens because in America they get free medical care and education. Once they become citizens and have to pay for these ‘privileges’ is when they find out how much it costs to support those that don’t pay into the system. Once they become citizens with the right to vote is when they learn that their vote is pretty much meaningless because the ‘fraternity of political hacks’ with their hands out serve only special interest groups with the millions of dollars it takes to grease their greedy palms.

The new military motto should be “If they are willing to kill for the U.S. then give them citizenship. ORAH!”

Rep. Nick Thompson v. Rush Limbaugh

When Henrietta Hughes, homeless after losing her home to foreclosure in 2003, pleaded for help from Barack Obama during his town hall meeting in Fort Myers, Florida, she not only received a sympathetic kiss from the president but a helping hand from state Rep. Nick Thompson, R-Fort Myers, and his wife Chene. Mrs. Thompson, a former prosecutor, on the spot offered Hughes, 61, and her son use of a second home they have been unable to sell or rent. Call it a random act of kindness.

But before long, Rush Limbaugh was on the air casting Hughes as an "embarrassing" poster child for Americans expecting free hand-outs from the president ("I mean, as an American, this is embarrassing, and it's sad, but there's a reason why -- there's a reason why this woman takes her one chance to talk to the president of the United States and ask and beg for a car and a kitchen," said Limbaugh). And Rep. Thompson started receiving calls from people across the country bashing him as a disgrace to Republican principles of self-responsibility. Thompson makes no apologies, noting after losing her home to foreclosure in 2003 that Hughes has been paying credit card debt, car insurance, even tithing to her ministry, while living off Social Security and food stamps.

"There is nothing more American or Christian or freedom-loving than someone of their own volition using the resources they have to help someone, and not going through some government program or using tax dollars,’’ Thompson said.

These people, Nick Thompson and his wife, out of the goodness of their hearts, allowed this stranger to live in an unused home while she tries to get on her feet. Kudos to them both.

Rush Limbaugh, giant ass that he is, has the nerve to rant against the Thompsons’ as an embarrassment to Americans. For this comment and many, many others, Rush Limbaugh is an embarrassment to humanity. He views this type of charity only through the eyes of “what is in it for me”. And then his ‘ditto-head flock of sheep’ start bashing Thompson as a disgrace to Republican principles of self-responsibility.

Self responsibility through helping your neighbor in time of need is the greatest show of respect we can offer each other. This is the kind of respectability that far too many Americans have forgotten.

As Mr. Thompson said "Whether Republican or Democrat, the more people do small things like just helping your neighbor the better off we’d be."

Chavez Expels EU Envoy Over ‘Dictator” Remark

Chavez expels yet another foreign diplomat for saying what his cronies are afraid to say out loud.

Luis Herrero, a European Union parliamentarian from Spain called President Hugo Chavez a dictator. Apparently Chavez is trying his best to clean up the list of adjectives used to describe him, and dictator is one term that must go.

In fact, Chavez was so incensed by the use of this term by the truth-talker Mr. Herrero that he was escorted to the airport by members of the national guard without first collecting his belongs from his hotel room. Wow, this guy really hit a dictatorial nerve.

Dictator, excuse me, El Presidente Chavez claims to be bringing democracy to his fellow Venezuelans, but only on his terms, and he won’t allow any poisonous truth to taint his “peaceful climate” of reform for Venezuela.

Mr. Herrero was to serve as observer during the upcoming referendum on President Hugo Chavez's term limits and during a press conference aired on Globovision used harsh words against President Chavez's handling of the referendum, implying the Venezuelan President was trying to manipulate the polling schedule to his benefit and called for Venezuelans to "vote freely."

In the true spirit of democracy he said, "Don't ever let fear obstruct your vote, as a dictator has premeditated."

Feds Going to ‘Save’ us with Stimulus Package

Please excuse the skeptic in me, I guess he hasn’t been properly fed lately.

By now you have all heard that Obama’s Gurus have put together a handy how-to guide to help our faltering economy. The price tag, as of this writing, is $787 billion of our tax dollars. Wow, that should stimulate even the most stubborn spend thrift amongst us. Do you hear that bankers, we don’t need your stinking money.

Let’s look at how this kick in the financial pants is going to help us.

$120 billion for infrastructure – repairing bridges, roads, and government buildings. I wonder what percentage is going to go for government buildings. Personally, I think the roads and bridges should get it first, after all it is our money.

$100 billion plus for education – keep it all from the administrators, we have seen far too often how they like to spend top dollar for coffee makers and cushy office digs for themselves first. How about letting the kids and teachers have the lions share this time, okay guys.

$30 billion on energy-related projects to create “green jobs”. Since this “green jobs” things is such a new concept, and apparently the latest hot button issue, expect this money to be frittered away before someone can get a real handle on how it should be spent. I wonder if this is the 1-3 million new jobs the Budget Office is claiming will be created. Since so many jobs have been lost this past year is this going to equal a net loss or gain?

Over $212 billion in tax breaks for individuals and businesses – this way the money only goes to those who actually file taxes. What a concept, giving back to the people who actually footed the bill for this monster plan. $400 per person doesn’t sound like very much and we all now it won’t go very far.

But, there’s plenty to go around, so for those of you who no longer have jobs because of the way those greed-meisters on Wall Street ripped this economy apart, here’s a little something for you: $267 billion in direct spending like food stamps and unemployment benefits. There’s even enough for all the illegals who live off of us.

Realistically speaking, this is more of a band-aid than any real help. It is rightfully labeled a ‘stimulus plan’ and not a big fix. It will take some very fancy footwork and hard introspections to get this economy to the stable and prosperous condition it was in before the Bush administration dipped their greedy fingers into the till.

Hmmm, according to my calculations this comes to $729 billion. I wonder where the remaining $58 billion is going? Oh well, I'm sure Obama's crew has the matter under control. No worries, right?

So, let’s not sit on the sidelines holding our breath for this financial wizardry to take effect, go out and spend your $400 bucks like the ‘gift’ it is meant to be. We’ll worry about how we’re going to pay for it tomorrow. After all, we’re carrying on and old American tradition.

Groups Asking U.S. to Ban Use of Cluster Bombs and Landmines

Leaders from 67 diverse U.S. groups issued a strong call to President Obama to reconsider U.S. noncompliance with international treaties banning the use of landmines and cluster bombs.

The signers of the petition include the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the head of Evangelicals for Social Action, the President and CEO of CARE, the heads of communion of seven major U.S. churches, two former U.S. ambassadors, one former senator, and Citizens for Global Solutions.

Human rights groups noted the United States' conspicuous absence in Oslo early December 2008 as 100 nations gathered to sign a landmark treaty outlawing the use of cluster munitions.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush opposed signing the treaty banning cluster bombs, with the State Department saying: "Such a general ban on cluster munitions will put the lives of our military men and women, and those of our coalition partners, at risk."

Since his election, many activists and stakeholders are questioning whether President Obama will reverse his predecessor's policy.

Cluster Munitions are indiscriminate and unreliable weapons and pose an unacceptable threat to civilian populations during and long after combat operations have ceased -- in much the same way as do landmines. The use of these types of weapons is an egregious blight against humanity and should be outlawed in every country.

Cluster munitions are large weapons that release up to hundreds of smaller sub-munitions.

Air-dropped or ground-launched, they cause two major humanitarian problems and risks to civilians:

First, their widespread dispersal means they cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians so the humanitarian impact can be extreme, especially when the weapon is used in or near populated areas.
Second, many sub-munitions fail to detonate on impact and become de facto antipersonnel mines killing and maiming people long after the conflict has ended.

For these reasons, 98 percent of cluster-bomb victims are civilians and 27 percent are children, says a study by Handicap International.

The United States is one of only 39 nations in the world that is not party to the decade-old Mine Ban Treaty, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in March.

Porn and Politics

Dusty Storm, a ‘personality’ in the porn business, is being considered to run for political office in the state of Louisiana. Has the state of our political system gotten so distorted and fallen to such a low level of respect that this proposal can be entertained as serious? As if to say, “people we have elected to political office exhibit the same low-moral character of the porn industry so why not elect a person whose only qualifications are that she ‘rose to the top of her profession’.

Who are these fans but a bunch a men in a perpetual state of arousal.

If the political arena was not so riddled with corruption and ineffective personalities then candidates like this could never be considered. We have done this to ourselves.

Her backers say her ”real world experience and special understanding of the economic hardships facing Louisianans and Americans make her uniquely qualified to take on the tough challenges we face.” What a load of hogwash! Special understanding? Uniquely qualified? Please enlighten us as to what special understanding and unique qualities does having sex with anyone who breathes makes her think she is more capable than someone engaged in legitimate employment facing the daily struggle of putting food on their table and keeping a roof over their head.

Her backers claim she has a wide political spectrum of followers (I’ll bet she does) who think her philosophy of personal responsibility and the promotion of individual enterprise are enough to get her elected. This is the same philosophy of personal responsibility that pushes every law-abiding, tax-paying, blue-collar worker in America to trade their time for an increasingly diminishing paycheck in hopes of providing for their family. And these are the lucky ones who managed to hang on to their jobs after their corporate leadership has taken everything they can get first.

There is a dangerous undercurrent here that promotes promiscuity and breaks down family values. Let’s find out what her parents think of "her determination and talents to the professional level, becoming a featured performer in the adult entertainment industry."

Political careers have crumbled over promiscuous behavior. Families dissolve over promiscuous behavior. Is this symbol of an entire industry that considers monogamy as passé and turns the act of making love into a money making enterprise really a champion of family values or an example of morality and ethics? Have we become so jaded that we now expect so little of the process of writing our laws and protecting our rights that we can elect a porn star to take on these responsibilities?

Perhaps the time is right for porn to get into politics. Politicians have screwed us out of everything else we hold dear.

New Economic Stimulus Plan: Suspend the Personal Income Tax

Congress is getting an earful from their constituents over the bailout program and taxes. The U.S. public has become accustomed to learning of misappropriations of funds, pork barrel spending, earmarks, and the like. It is not unheard of to learn that a politician did not pay their fair share of taxes. But when the federal government wants to use our tax dollars to bail out every company who is experiencing hard times for the purpose of ‘stimulating’ the economy, we need to rethink our governments spending strategy.

With hundreds of thousands of layoffs every month now, input into the treasury’s coffers are slowing down. Typically, when a company’s income starts waning they raise prices to existing customers to cover the deficit. What is the government going to do in this same situation? Raise taxes?

It is going to be a hard sell, especially when we learn of politician who vote for these raises are not paying their share and still receive annual pay raises.

I think the best way to get this economy back on the right track is to suspend the personal income tax. Allow us, the individuals who still have jobs, to use that money that currently goes to pay our politicians, to decide how to best spend our money. Only then will politicians experience the real pain of facing the threat of not having a paycheck to put food on the table. Maybe being forced to feel what it is like to face possible eviction from their family home will they be ‘stimulated’ to pass some meaningful legislation.

Global Warming is Real, Mr. Klaus

The annual world economic forum of global leaders was held in Davos, Switzerland this past week, and Czech President Vaclav Klaus used this forum to verbally attack Al Gore over his stance on global warming.

"I don't think that there is any global warming," said the 67-year-old liberal, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. "I don't see the statistical data for that."

Referring to the former US vice president, who attended Davos this year, he added: "I'm very sorry that some people like Al Gore are not ready to listen to the competing theories. I do listen to them.

"Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. Al Gore is an important person in this movement."

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, he said that he was more worried about the reaction to the perceived dangers than the consequences.

"I'm afraid that the current crisis will be misused for radically constraining the functioning of the markets and market economy all around the world," he said.

"I'm more afraid of the consequences of the crisis than the crisis itself."

I agree that people tend to become alarmed over perceived dangers, that is after all what warnings are meant to do, if they are taken seriously. This climate threat has been ‘perceived’ by climatologists for many years and those early predictions are beginning to take shape. The non-scientific community needs only observe the changes in weather patterns and the resulting destruction of wildlife habitat to see this is true.

You cannot dismiss the fact that polar ice sheets are melting at a record pace. You cannot ignore the fact that navigable routes have opened through the arctic, about 30 years ahead of predictions.

Nor can you ignore the fact that the planets surface is warming up.

The greatest debate over causal factors is whether these changes are the result of a natural cycle or are they man-made.

The burning of fossil fuels has certainly taken its toll, not only on human health but also on the health of the atmosphere as a result of excavating earths resources, burning those resources and releasing the resulting gases into the atmosphere. The resultant greenhouse gases increase the planets temperature. Not alarmist theory, scientific fact.

Earth’s climate is a closed system. Everything that exists in this system, stays in this system. The melting of polar ice caps produces evaporation and the increased atmospheric moisture results in increased rainfall which then leads to increased severity of hurricanes. A side effect of this increased hurricane intensity is the associated low pressure sucks more moisture away from the drier climates of the world creating more severe droughts. As a result, agricultural patterns worldwide are being affected.

Polar ice cap melt also increases sea levels which could result in future category 2 and 3 storms causing much more severe flooding than anticipated otherwise, in low-lying coastal areas.

As the planet grows ever warmer, and former cold zones give way to rising temperatures, plant and animal species are loosing their habitat and dying off thereby decreasing biodiversity. This does not bode well for planets inhabitants, for man and beast.

Are these the ramblings of ‘alarmists’ for the purpose of “radically constraining the functioning of the markets and market economy”? It seems Mr. Klaus, and by association all other naysayers, is more concerned with the health of the market system than with the health of our planet. And this perfectly illustrates the very reason why we are in this mess today.

We dismiss scientific findings at our own peril. This has proven itself many times throughout history. Taking heed of this lesson is of the utmost importance to prevent a predicted global calamity.

It is a widespread fact that species and their habitats are on the decrease while chances for ecosystems to adapt naturally are diminishing. This cannot be merely brushed aside as ‘alarmist’.


Sources:
Science Daily, Sep 22, 2005

Global Issues, Jan 1, 2009

Climate Change Weather Patterns